Can No Social Media Be As Philanthropically Engaging As Social Media?
It is a delicious irony suitable for for the latest diva of over-the-top corporate pop (As an old fogey, I confess I’m still surprised at how much Ms. Gaga’s persona is so dependent on what Madonna has already done. But back to our story): A denizen of social media and public attention announces via social media her ambition to sign off social media until $1 million dollars is raised on/for World AIDS Day (tomorrow, 1 December). She is joined by a number of other celebrities, including Kim Kardashian, her sister, Khloé, David LaChapelle, Justin Timberlake, Usher, Serena Williams and Elijah Wood (according to The New York Times). Lady Gaga has taken brave stands against torture and against Arizona’s immigration bills, and we have every reason to believe – nay, be thankful – that she is again using her popularity for a cause of those who can not speak to millions of people at a time. As for the celebrities’ signing off Twitter, Facebook, et al., are we also seeing a challenge to the ever-present hegemony of social media in our lives?
| Category Communications, Healthcare, News and Current Affairs, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#MARKETING: The Black-Friday-Cyber-Monday Double Punch
Welcome back from Thanksgiving. And, if you are like some 212 million of your closer friends, welcome back from shopping. Sales figures for ‘Black Friday‘ (the day many stores move from the debt of red ink to the black of profitability in their books) looked stronger than they have in a while, according to The Wall Street Journal: “The number of people who shopped at stores and online between Thursday and Sunday jumped 8.7% to 212 million shoppers, according to a National Retail Federation survey of 4,306 shoppers conducted by BIGresearch.” The bar has been pretty low the last two or three years, but the question is whether a vibrant Black Friday means a growing economy.
| Category Community, Marketing, News and Current Affairs, Technology, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#Tech: Two Applications To Find Deals Even After Black Friday
We hope you had a joyous and stuffed Thanksgiving with your family and friends. If you cut back on the turkey and the wine and the pie and the cognac to be sure you could be at the box store’s doors at 4:00am, then we hope you got what you wanted. Thanksgiving itself is wonderfully uncommercialized, but we all know what the next day is supposed to be about! Black Friday Deals often carry beyond Black Friday, or even the weekend, nowadays. And we wanted to share some news about two convenient apps that can find some of those deals for you.
| Category Desktop Apps, iDevice, iPad Apps, iPhone Apps, Technology, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Perspectives: Kristen Cambell of the National Council on Citizenship
Kristen Cambell, Director of New Media
When was the last time you tested your ‘Civic Health’ to find out if your actions, attitudes, and behavior indicated your full participation as an American citizen?
The National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) has established a ‘Civic Health Index’ to measure this very thing. Founded in 1946 and chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1953, this non-profit organization leads the way in promoting our nation’s civic life. Established to track, measure, and promote civic participation and engagement in partnership with other organizations on a bipartisan, collaborative basis, NCoC focuses on ways to enhance history and civics education, encourage national and community service, and promote greater participation in the political process.
The NCoC relies strongly on New Media (NM)—often referred to as Social Media for this readership—to get its message out to citizens across the country, and this week’s Perspectives spotlights their NM outreach director Kristen Cambell. (more…)
| Category Conference/Congress, Interview, Nonprofit, Politics, Special Series, Technology, Video Interview, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Cate Neilson
Resolved: Social Media Produces Social Good (Part 2: Arguments For The Negative)
Image via Wikipedia
In the debate over the influence social media has in steering social and/or political movements, the assumption seems generally to be that, yes, the ‘socially-engaged’ businesses, philanthropies, NGOs, etc., have found meaningful ways to leverage SM to further their causes. Two oft-cited examples are the impact that groups like MoveOn.org had in the election of Barack Obama in 2008, and the news of political violence imposed by Ahmadinejad that leaked out of Iran via cell phones and Twitter accounts after his contested re-election.
Nevertheless, a powerful counter-argument was presented by Malcom Gladwell in The New Yorker Magazine a couple of weeks ago that posits that social media tend to amplify the sense of change, not the actual change itself.
And so, the rebuttal:
| Category Facebook, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Politics, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, Web and Print | | 3 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Resolved: Social Media Produces Social Good (Part 1: Arguments For The Affirmative)
Image via CrunchBase
As a buildup to our upcoming Perspectives interview with Kristen Cambell, Director of Programs and New Media the National Conference on Citizenship, that will be published this Thanksgiving week, we wanted to point our loyal readers to a brewing debate about social media as a change-agent for good – that social media have the capabilities of influencing meaningful behavioral changes among people and help institute (at least ‘organize’) systemic/institutional change. John Locke wrote hundreds of pages about the family, not the king, as the bedrock of a free political society – and it still took a half-century for the American colonists to revolt. How can a bunch of 140-character tweets instigate such change? Many believe it already has…
(more…)
| Category Audio Interview, Communications, Community, Marketing, Nonprofit, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, Video Interview, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#Communications: Advertising Agencies Still Working Up To Digital Age
For those who think young…
Danielle Sacks has posted a fascinating appraisal of the advertising world at FastTimes.com that demonstrates how behind-the-curve many advertising agencies are. The digital age is spawning what she calls ‘the first creative revolution since the 1960s,’ when image and copy and design were handed over to experts within vertical agencies who worked for the client, but not at the behest of the client. Despite the technological changes of the last couple of decades though – changes that have put the power of descent cameras and desktop publishing software in the hands of consumers – a number of agencies are still thinking in a 1960s model. What is happening to these agencies? How are they coping with the changes?
(more…)
| Category Communications, Marketing, News and Current Affairs, Social Media, Technology, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
It’s Cool – And Lucrative – To Be Mobile. Is It Smart?
Image via CrunchBase
Today we again turn to the polling giant Nielsen, who have published a survey of over 5000 consumers who have a mobile device and how life situations influence their choices of mobile device and the ways they use it. In this particular survey, the questions focused on who used their mobile device to follow (or ‘click through’) ads and if they followed the advertisement to the point of making online purchases. Turns out, some notable biases are found based on the user’s gender, education, and (even less surprisingly) economic status. (more…)
| Category Apple, Hardware Review, iDevice, iPad Apps, iPhone Apps, Marketing, Media Review, Nonprofit, Technology | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
The Times They Are A-Changin’ – Is Your Nonprofit Prepared?
Image via CrunchBase
The clocks fell back a few weeks ago. We have seen political power shift yet again in Congress. We are out of the Great Recession, though only Wall Street bankers seem to be enjoying the economic ‘growth.’ And Facebook has developed an email service that seems to be about ending email as a viable service. The changes are not permanent, but change is. And those in the not-for-profit sector must be ready to take on the challenges of change. Rebecca Thomas recently posted a two-part interview with Ben Cameron, program director for the arts at Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, on the subject of change and how philanthropic organizations can stay with it. (more…)
| Category Community, Grants and Funding, Interview, Nonprofit | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Font Faces On The Web: New Developments Allow New Flexibilities
Image via Wikipedia
In a satisfying moment of serendipity that web browsing allows so many of us, I found an extended discussion about recent developments about the expanding opportunities to use creative fonts on websites to follow up on yesterday’s brief history of two popular print fonts (Baskerville and Gill Sans). The development of fonts from the scribe’s quill through the Gutenberg Bible to modern desktop-publishing software and laser jet Open-type printers have been driven largely by the creativity of font creators/designers and the technical issues of building the fonts either in space or via software. Either way, the font was an integral part of the process of information-creation for the user of that font. (more…)
| Category Media Review, Site Administration, Technology, Web and Print | | 1 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#GraphicDesign: Fonts Faces Provide The Foundation Of Good Communication
Whenever the first homo sapien (sapien) first put his or her finger into clay or ash and marked that clay or ash to communicate an idea to another person, she or he created written language, and perhaps a font face. Over the next N millennia language groups evolved largely toward two camps: the pictographic written languages (think: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese ideograms) and the Alpha Betic languages (think: Greek, Aramaic, Latin and all its derivatives). Earliest evidence of this latter alphabetic tradition (so called because the first two letter in ancient Greek were the characters Alpha and Beta) comes from about 1500 BC/BCE. The lettering system best known as ‘Greek’ began in fact with the Phoenicians in modern-day Israel/Palestine about 1000 BC/BCE. Not to worry: we are not going to walk through the history of the alphabet and its myriad of fonts (including Myriad). We’ve all got more pressing needs on a Monday afternoon. But we would like to point you toward an interesting series of sketches of a number of popular fonts by idsgn.org entitled “Know Your Type.”
| Category printing, Technology, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Twitter Joins The Trip To Location-Based Social Media
Image via CrunchBase
Twitter recently, if coyly, announced that its developers are working on a beefed up Places-like feature that allows Twitter-ers to specify the location from which their tweets are sent. The feature is not new to Twitter, but the company’s reminding the public of it suggests an effort to steal some thunder from (or ride the wave with) Facebook’s announcement of Places and Deals that we noted earlier. How might Twitter fare in the micro-blogging/location-specific skirmish?
| Category Community, Geo-Location, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Social Media Remain New Communications Technology For Us All
One of the many parodies on SM Training
Some try to create a mystique around social media, suggesting SM has reached a maturity that only ‘the experts’ understand or that it is a tool only they should wield. Indeed, with a modicum of resourcefulness, one can find a number of video parodies online of such social-media expertise. Once we recall that most social-media technologies were developed by college kids pulling all-nighters before scaling up their models and opening up their data bases, the mystique of difficulty begins to dissipate.
That said, some forethought, planning, and training is certainly valuable, especially for a mission-based or philanthropic organization, before a social-media presence is built. Otherwise, small mistakes that appear merely clumsy in their own right multiply exponentially across the networks of the followers of your followers. If your business or neighborhood association is considering an expanded presence online, you might take comfort from the fact that even media giants like the PBS News Hour learned a few new things while trying to ramp up its SM outreach during the midterm elections.
| Category Communications, Media Review, News and Current Affairs, Technology, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Meta-Debate About Mega-Cities (Or Not) Of The Future
Yesterday we posted news concerning two multi-family buildings opened or in development in Washington DC and Baltimore. These projects, initiated and funded by a bipartisan association of private- and public-sector institutions, are also meeting the gold standard of LEED Certification of environmental stewardship. The project in Washington DC represents a new model of Section 8 housing that has appeared over the last decade or so – a model that encourages the participation and investment of residents inside and around the building to make the community a success (See also our Perspectives interview with Andrew Vincent and Allison Pendell-Jones with the Baltimore AHC). The one in Baltimore is a broader community project meant to encourage an ethnically and economically mixed community in an environment meant to draw on the conveniences of urban living while retaining the space and modern amenities associated with the suburbs. Today we wanted to call attention to a larger debate about how housing, urban populations, and suburban communities might evolve over the next couple of decades as we recover from the Great Recession. How might we live then?
| Category Affordable Housing, Community, Greening, Opinion, Revitalization | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Baltimore/Washington Area Expanding Multi-Use and Green Housing
Mockup of East Baltimore Uplands Community
The housing market remains in the doldrums and the legal ramifications of the market’s bubble and collapse remain in the news. Nevertheless, the Baltimore-Washington metro region has seen an ongoing commitment from lenders, investors, and construction firms within both the private and public sectors to expand green multi-family housing. Multi-Housing News Online (MHN) has recently reported on a couple of projects that are moving toward completion, even as gloom hangs over the rest of the market.
| Category Affordable Housing, Banking & Finance, Community, Greening, Revitalization | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#Tech: Nielson Reports Smartphone Use Up To 28% In US
The people at the Nielson rating agency have just posted information about the use of smart phones (phones with an operating system for applications beyond phone/text communications) in the United States. For those of us who follow the industry, the numbers are striking though not surprising: Adaptation of smartphone technology continues to outpace traditional cellphone purchases, even if the latter retains the majority of the market:”The growing popularity of smartphones like Apple’s iPhone, RIM’s Blackberry devices and a variety of Google Android-based models on the market, has accelerated the adoption rate. Among those who acquired a new cellphone in the past six months, 41 percent opted for a smartphone over a standard feature phone, up from 35 percent last quarter.”But what else do we learn from the Nielson report about who uses the technology, and which OSes are growing in popularity?
| Category iDevice, Media Review, Technology | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Nonprofits Prepare For Changing Political Landscape
- Image via Wikipedia
Yes, the elections were a whole week ago. The new Congress will not be seated until January 2011, anyway. But some voices in the nonprofit world are still responding to the former and preparing for the latter. We would encourage our readers in the mission-based community to continue to do the same. A note of caution, though: If truth be the first casualty of war, open-mindedness can be the first casualty of a mid-term election. (more…)
| Category National/International, News and Current Affairs, Nonprofit, Opinion, Politics | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Obama Administration Cuts Tax On Small-Business Property Investments
Even as the dust continues to settle over this week’s midterm elections, the IRS has been reminding small- and medium-business owners that changes in the tax code could mean appreciable tax savings over the next few years. These saving are not part of the soon-to-expire Bush Administration tax cuts, whose continuance and in what form fuel ongoing debates. These particular savings are tied to capital investments under $2 million during this calendar year. But to take advantage of the tax break, companies must purchase new equipment and put it to use by the end of this year.
| Category Banking & Finance, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Politics | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Facebook Update: Going Places And Making Deals
One of the leitmotifs of the fictionalized biopic “The Social Network” concerns Mark Zuckerberg‘s inability/unwillingness to commercialize the burgeoning behemoth that he and his peers have conceptualized and coded. If that inability/unwillingness to imagine the commercial opportunities of Facebook were true as portrayed in the film, the CEO has certainly overcome his shyness of the market.
Recent updates to Facebook’s iPhone app allow members to mark their ‘Places’ and invite or even check-in their friends to that location. The company has also leveraged its outreach potential with customers to wrest ‘Deals’ from retailers and restaurants who want to have one Facebook user draw in other users. How does it all work for the user?
| Category iDevice, Marketing, Software Review, Technology | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Upcoming Seminars, Webinars, And Courses For Nonprofits
Image via Wikipedia
The midterm elections are done, and the races largely decided. The dust will take a bit of time to settle, and the analysts will continue to discuss ‘the meaning’ of the Republican takeover of the House, etc. We, on the other hand, turn our attentions to a few of the upcoming seminars and conferences that could be of great benefit to nonprofits as they survey the new political landscape.
| Category Grants and Funding, News and Current Affairs | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#Interview: Ellayne Ganzfried, Executive Director of The National Aphasia Association
Ellayne Ganzfried, Director of the National Aphasia Association
(As promised, we return to our look at the condition called Aphasia in a conversation with Ellayne Ganzfried of the National Aphasia Association.)
Ellayne Ganzfried wanted to be a teacher, but a hiring freeze in New York steered life in a completely unexpected direction. Ganzfried, Executive Director of the NAA, has had a lot of unexpected surprises along her career path, all leading to work she loves—helping raise awareness for people with aphasia.
Forced to explore options other than teaching, nothing stood out until a counselor made her a proposition. “The college I attended in Brooklyn, attempting to correct the local accent, required a speech screening to decide if a student should take classes in public speaking…after I read the passage my advisor asked my major, which I hadn’t decided. She promised to exempt me from the public speaking class if I took a course in speech-language pathology. I told her she had a deal, and once I started taking the classes I fell in love with it.”
| Category Healthcare, Interview, Nonprofit, Special Series | | Comments Off
Written by: Cate Neilson
The Midterms Are Here! The Midterms Are Here!
Image via Wikipedia
News sources, pundits, entertaining commentators, irritating commentators, restoration rallies, and $3.5 billion in spending have all been leading up to this day. You’ve probably made up your mind and/or cast your votes, or you will be doing both in the next few hours. We want to join in the chorus to Get Out The Vote, and MKCREATIVE recently tweeted the latest video/Facebook/political/future-past parody mashup by MoveOn.org’s CNNBC ‘network’ (Disclaimer: the resulting video implicates you in the fate of nation in 2050 and is not bipartisan). But we realize that we’re likely preaching to the choir. What to do between casting your vote and hearing the analysts telling you what your vote means?
| Category iDevice, Local/Maryland, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Nonprofit, Politics, Reviews, Technology, Web and Print | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
Media Pundits Scramble To Explain ‘Rally To Restore Sanity/Fear’
A good deal of e-ink has been posted on the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear this past Saturday, much of it impressed by its size yet unsure what it was for. How it might (not) sway voters leading up to tomorrow’s midterms also has been a running theme in today’s 24-hour news cycle. Our posting today is a brief and small compendium of the conversation about the event. What we hope to see is long-term involvement with issues, any issues.
| Category Community, Conference/Congress, Local/Maryland, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Politics | | Comments Off
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD